Jeff Metcalfe, The Arizona Republic and azcentral.com. I cover Arizona State baseball and women's basketball plus Olympic sports.I grew up in Sterling, Ill., and attended the University of Illinois. I worked in Colorado Springs for a decade after graduating until coming to Phoenix in 1985.
I've covered ASU sports since then as well as the Olympics. I've covered 11 Olympic Games. I live in Mesa and I'm big into running and cycling although it's harder to make time for the bike since becoming a father and carting my son to band, soccer and theatre.

Northern Illinois-like team will be an automatic pick in new playoff system

Northern Illinois is not going away.

Not the Huskies per se after their first BCS appearance in the Orange Bowl. But what they represent, the so-called Group of Five — I guess Five Guys was already taken — conferences who are guaranteed one berth in the new college football playoff system starting in 2014.

The top team from the Big East, Conference USA, Mid-American, Mountain West and Sun Belt conferences will play in one of six bowl games whose participants will be determined by a selection committee with representatives from each of 11 Football Bowl Division conferences and independents.

So in mapping this year’s teams into the new structure, which includes two semifinals ahead of a national championship game, No. 15 Northern Illinois would make the postseason top tier and No. 21 Louisville would not. They are both in Bowl Championship Series bowls this season because the MAC champion (NIU) is among the top 16 and higher ranked than the champion of an automatic qualifying conference (Louisville from the Big East).

The Sugar, Orange and Rose bowls will be contract bowls in the new system that will continues through the 2025 season. The Fiesta, Cotton and Chick-fil-A bowls are expected to be chosen in the spring as host bowls — without conference contracts — and be among the six bowls that will host national semifinals on a rotating basis. The championship game will be bid out separately like a Super Bowl or basketball Final Four.

If, for example, the Fiesta and Chick-fil-A bowls were hosting semifinals this season then one would get No. 1 Notre Dame vs. No. 4 Oregon and the other No. 2 Alabama vs. No. 3 Florida. One proposal for deciding which semifinal is played where is to give the top-seeded team choice of site, thus preventing a No. 4 seed from having a mostly home advantage.

Other major bowls in that scenario would be No. 5 Kansas State (Big 12 champion) vs. No. 7 Georgia (top SEC not in the semifinals) in the Sugar, No. 6 Stanford (Pac-12 champion, not in semifinals) vs. Wisconsin (Big Ten champion) in the Rose, No. 8 LSU (some years a Big Ten team or Notre Dame) vs. No. 12 Florida State (ACC champion) in the Orange and No. 9 Texas A&M (at-large) vs. Northern Illinois (automatic qualifier from Group of Five) in the Cotton.

Under the BCS system this season, we will get No. 1 Notre Dame vs. No. 2 Alabama in the championship game, No. 3 Florida vs. No. 21 Louisville in the Sugar, No. 4 Oregon vs. No. 5 Kansas State in the Fiesta, No. 6 Stanford vs. Wisconsin in the Rose and No. 12 Florida State vs. No. 15 Northern Illinois in the Orange.

The new system creates room for Georgia, LSU and Texas A&M in the top tier while evicting Louisville since the Big East loses its sole automatic berth. No. 10 South Carolina and No. 11 Oklahoma are left out of both. Unranked Wisconsin gets in both as Big Ten title game champion.

Much will depend on who is hosting the semifinals. If in the earlier scenario, the Rose was a semifinal host instead of the Fiesta then Stanford and Wisconsin likely would be sent to Arizona by the selection committee. That group is expected to work off some published rankings akin to the current BCS standings although the details are yet to be finalized.

ESPN will televise the championship game, semifinals and four other major bowls in the new system under a recent 12-year deal worth an estimated $470 million annually. ESPN currently pays $125 million per year for rights to the Fiesta, Sugar and Orange bowls and BCS Championship Game.

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